Warehouse or mass merchandising has become a popular form of retail selling. The manufacturer packages the merchandise, loads it onto pallets and ships in bulk to a retailer. The retailer places the pallets of the merchandise in a storage area, aisle or in a strategic high traffic area of a large warehouse. The consumer is permitted to wander through the warehouse collecting the desired merchandise. The retailer is able to reduce costs for stocking shelves, tagging, unpacking and displaying the merchandise. These costs savings are passed onto the consumer.
The merchandise is normally left in the cartons and on pallets presenting an unattractive display. In the case of bottled product, such as windshield washer fluid, driveway sealer, varsol, deck sealer, asphalt patching compound, fertilizer and other liquids which are normally sold in large containers, the containers are stacked in layers. When a consumer removes a container, it may not be the uppermost container which may cause the stack of containers to collapse. Since the retailer has a reduced staff, the disarray of containers may persist for an extended period of time. On seeing a disarray of containers, subsequent consumers may be influenced negatively and ultimately select a product from a different display, often a competitive product.
There are numerous container designs which are stackable and suitable present unique problems. First, these bottle containers are designed to interlock vertically making it difficult for a consumer to remove an upper bottle from the immediately lower bottle. Second, the upper bottle container must be alternated or rotated relative to the immediately lower bottle container presenting an alternating pattern to the front label of the product.